Coaching Improves Emotional Intelligence

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This is really a good article from Harvard Business Review - Can You Really Improve Your Emotional Intelligence?  The good news is, Emotional Intelligence (EQ) can be improved, but it takes time, effort and good guidance.  The article offers well-supported, well-reasoned perspectives on how leadership coaching can help:

Good news for all you coaches and your clients; bad news for the skeptics. While no program can get someone from 0 to 100%, a well-designed coaching intervention can easily achieve improvements of 25%. Various meta-analyses (quantitative reviews that synthesize the findings from many published studies) suggest that the most coachable element of EQ is interpersonal skills — with average short-term improvements of 50%. Think of it as teaching negotiation and social etiquette — what the great Dale Carnegie called "how to win friends and influence people." For stress management programs, the average improvement reported is around 35%. Even empathy can be trained in adults. The most compelling demonstration comes from neuropsychological studies highlighting the "plasticity" of the social brain. These studies suggest that, with adequate training, people can become more pro-social, altruistic, and compassionate. [emphasis added]